Character Math
Hello, stranger! Maybe you are a new player, or maybe you've been around a while but only as FCs of various kinds. You are trying to write your first app for an OC and the math involved is bewildering you. Fear not! This page is here to help! As is the New Player Chargen page. Maybe you already have an idea of what faction you'd like to join and what you'd like your function and general persona in that faction to be. Maybe you already know what you want to turn into (these three things are closely interlinked). If so, great! If not, take some time now to think about it and consider the strengths and weaknesses of the different factions and how their qualities might suit you. Autobot personalities are: likeable, friendly, well-meaning, stubborn, defiant, creative, compassionate, thoughtful, brave, freethinking, generous. The Autobots are, generally, conservationists. They are willing to lay down their lives to prevent the Decepticons from enslaving and strip-mining more primitive inhabited planets (like Earth) to plunder their natural resources. The Autobot faction was formed millions of years ago on Cybertron when a group of Transformer politicans refused to allow another group to harvest resources from a planet with life on it, because it would've damaged that planet's ecosystem, even though the Transformers were in a fuel shortage at the time. Very few modern Autobots are old enough to be the original set, and they tend to have become more warlike as time went on, in order to keep up with the Decepticons... but the core of their faction is about protecting the helpless from exploitation. Traditionally Autobots turn into civilian vehicles (made for service with a smile by the Quintessons), although more recently the percentage of them built for war has increased. Although a few Autobots change into things that fly, virtually no Autobots are capable of flight in robot mode. Autobots are typically friendly with humans and other aliens, since they're on this planet to protect the humans and other Earthly life forms. The humans also (usually) appreciate their Autobot friends. Decepticon personalities are: bold, aggressive, cruel, conniving, ruthless, fearless, cowardly, brutish, wild, implacable, indomitable. The Decepticons are a diverse bunch, sometimes pretty accurately described as "misfits." Their personalities tend to vary widely based on their altmodes; the aircraft usually adhere to more of a military hierarchy and tend to be spit-and-polish types, while the ground pounders are usually rough and tumble sluggers of simple pleasures and little ambition. One thing all Decepticons have in common is that they respond to the use of force. Power commands them and power is their reward. They tend to be flagrant in their wanton consumption of everything, be it fuel, slaves, ammunition, territory or any other resource. The Decepticons can trace their lineage to the original line of combat Transformers who overthrew their masters, the Quintessons, and fought for freedom. But not everyone's freedom... just their own. Decepticons acknowledge authority only so long as they have to, and usurp it when they can. They tend not to have close friends and their relationships with eachother are more like comrades in arms than boon companions. All Decepticons are made for war. This doesn't mean they're necessarily made for open combat; intelligence-gathering and engineering and logistics are also necessary in war. But all of them are war machines. They are typically well-armed and each one can fly in at least one mode. Decepticons do not interact peacefully with humans unless it is to exploit them in some way. More commonly they view organic life as an annoyance, at best ignored, at worst tormented for fun. Let's say you've decided on an Autobot boat. A torpedo boat, with a function of SENTRY, your job is to guard the rivers and shores from incursion by seagoing Decepticons like the Seacons, Submarauder or Octopunch. Although you have to remain in robot mode on land, you take this as part of the job and consider it worthwhile, because the littoral ecosystems are some of the Earth's most sensitive and worth protecting, or maybe it's because the shores are the natural border of every human-inhabited landmass, and you consider yourself the watcher on the walls. Maybe you just love the thrill of a pitching sea and an exciting night hunt. Whether your motivation is militant or ecological, you still need to somehow fit this character into the 80 Character Points (unless you have extra to add from playing an FC) that you get for a starting OC. Let's work on that! You know you want to be a boat. That helps. And you know you want to be a defender, maybe a deadeye shot who picks off targets from the shore with a high-impact mass driver while they're still approaching the land. With this we can put something together for you. Let's start with your stats Everyone has nine core stats they can choose in chargen. STR, or Strength determines how much damage you deal with melee attacks like punches and electrified clubs. Melee damage is more effective on opponents smaller than you, and less effective on larger ones. Fast-moving vehicles are also harder to hit with melee attacks. ACC, or Accuracy, is used whenever you try to hit an opponent, regardless of the kind of attack you're using. END, or Endurance, represents your hit points, damaged (temporarily) whenever you take a damaging hit from an opponent. When these run out, you go offline and have to be repaired. FRP, or Firepower, determines how much damage your ranged weaponry does. Ranged damage is not affected by size, although it's still easier to hit a big thing than a small thing. AGL, or Agility, is your ability to dodge incoming attacks of all sorts. INT, or Intelligence, is used by abilities like Scout and generally represents how alert and aware your character is. LDR, or Leadership, is your character's charisma, cunning, and force of personality. It's used by abilities like Inspire. COU, or Courage, determines how long your character can keep their cool under fire. Your END is multiplied by your COU as a percentage to determine your COU/END. For instance, with 60 END and 50 COU, you can lose 50 percent of your END and remain effective. Once our hypothetical character gets down past 30 END remaining, they become fearful and are no longer an effective combatant. The rare characters with COU of 100 or more are literally fearless! TEC, or Technical, represents your character's degree of education and accumulated professional skills. It's used by abilities like Demolitions. As a new OC, none of these stats can be higher than 8 or lower than 3, but we'll worry about that later. For now, let's see what we have to work with if all your stats are "perfectly normal" 5s. New OCs normally start with 80 points in total so this will give us an idea of how much that leaves for building your modes, and making improvements. STR 5 (5CP) ACC 5 (5CP) END 5 (5CP) FRP 5 (etc.) AGL 5 INT 5 LDR 5 COU 5 TEC 5 Subtotal: 45CP So we have 35 left for your modes, with their attacks, abilities, velocities, armors and so on. Plus we're probably not going to want to keep all these stats at five! Essentials first, however. Your first mode is always a robot. It has a few more stats of its own: VEL1, or mode 1 velocity, is a measure of approximately how fast your top speed is. It's used for seeing if you can retreat from combat without anyone being able to hit you, and seeing if you can hit someone trying to retreat from you! A VEL1 of 4 is normal for Transformers. You do have to pay for it at a cost of 0.5CP per point. SIZE1, or mode 1 size, is how big you are in robot mode relative to everyone else. You get a size of 5 for free; this is about eighteen to twenty feet tall and is considered normal size. Warriors like Sideswipe and the Decepticon air force are usually size 6 (20'-25')in robot mode. If you want to increase your mode1 size, pay 2CP per size increase, and if you want to be a bit smaller, you get 1CP back for each decrease. Don't let your total sizes drop below 8 or your CP max will drop from 80 to 58, which would necessitate a different guide! Also, don't try to fake out the character staff by taking one super tiny useless mode in order to cheat and get more points to spend on your other huge brute of a mode, they have seen this before and they know what it looks like! ARMOR1, or mode 1 armor, determines how much damage is soaked by your armor from each incoming hit before you lose hp. Like Velocity, it costs 0.5 CP per point. Since your mode2 is a boat, you're probably large as a robot. You don't have to be the same size, most Transformers change size when they transform, but it's usually proportionate. Broadside is an enormous aircraft carrier, so he turns into a very large (but not nearly carrier-sized!) robot. Let's stick to the defaults for the other two. MODE1 - ROBOT SIZE1 - 6 (2CP) VEL1 - 4 (2CP) ARMOR1 - 5 (2.5CP) In your MODE2 (not getting into triplechangers here) your SIZE2 starts out the same. Your ARMOR2 and VEL2 start at 0 and have to be bought up from there; both cost 0.5CP per point. VEL2 is a little more valuable than VEL1 because it's used to help dodge incoming melee attacks. Looking at your chosen altmode of a PT boat, it's quite a lot larger than a car, and maybe a little larger than a tank or a jet, but not as large as a bomber, so let's call it size 7 (looking at "News Size" on the MUSH to find our examples). Even a fast boat is not terribly fast. "News Vel" says that 4 is 30mph and 5 is 60mph, so let's go with 4. Warships have thick armor, but this is more of a warBOAT so it's probably no more than your robot mode's armor. MODE2 - Torpedo Boat SIZE2 - 7 (4CP) VEL2 - 4 (2CP) ARMOR2 - 5 (2.5CP) There, now we have our modes, and we're up to 60CP so far. We still have 20CP left for everything else! That might seem like a lot but trust me, it gets eaten up fast by abilities and attacks. Let's switch windows and take a look at "!combatinfo ability" on the MUSH now to see if there's anything we need... ...okay, there's a lot of neat stuff in that list, but what do we NEED? Remember, we're a rookie still. We can always upgrade to add extra goodies later, we've got to establish our necessities first. All that really stands out as something you can't be a boat without is Swim, so let's take that. It's only 1CP. ABILITIES1 - None (0CP) ABILITIES2 - Swim (1CP) Time for attacks. We know we want some kind of high-power railgun in mode1 because that's cool. Transformers who have Earthly altmodes typically have sci-fi weapons in robot mode and weapons in mode2 that are either appropriate to that mode, or carried over (and often concealed) from their robot mode. Let's build the railgun first. I'll give you a suggestion and then break it down so you understand it. MODE1 ATTACKS "Scoped Railgun" - 4 ranged ballistic, accurate (6CP) This is a ranged attack, so it uses your FRP to determine its power, and it's of damage rank 4. Damage ranks available to new OCs range from 0-8, so 4 is respectable! That's fine, because you have lower level free built-in attacks that we call globals (see "!globals" on the MUSH), and you can pull this attack down to anywhere from 0-4 (see combat rules elsewhere on the wiki for more on this) so it covers a range. Ballistic is the type of damage it deals (see "!combatinfo damage-type") and it has the Accurate effect (see "!combatinfo effect") on it. Like your stats, the CP value of this attack can't be over 8. Accurate is worth 2CP by itself, and 2+4=6, so this is fine. Taking a few minutes to google-image-search for torpedo boats, we find that they typically had a few torpedoes, two or four, along the sides in tubes, and then a few machineguns and maybe an autocannon of some kind. The "pistol" attack in !globals will work for our machineguns, we can rename it when we use it. The four torpedoes are much heavier stuff. Since there are only a few of them and we don't expect to use them a whole lot but we want them to hit at full power when we do use them, let's use the Ammo effect for this. Ammo is a special effect that costs nothing itself, but changes the nature of the attack's usage cost from being based on regenerating and refuellable energon to being based on a limited number of shots you carry with you and can occasionally (once per week or so) get restocked at your faction bases. Ammo attacks cost NO energon to fire, but you have only so many uses with them and they do reduce your maximum energon for each "bin" of ammunition. The number of shots you get is equal to 10 minus the CP value of the attack. So an ammo attack worth 4CP has 6 shots in each bin, and one worth 8CP has 2 shots. This means that if we want to have 4 torpedoes, like the torpedo boat we found a photo of, we need our torpedo attack to cost 6CP. Either that or cost 8CP and pay double for a double bin, but that'd be way too expensive. Or it could cost 2CP and we could pay 25 percent less for a half bin, but that would be silly. 6CP is fine. MODE2 ATTACKS "Torpedo" - 8 ranged explosive, Inaccurate, 4 "Torpedoes" Ammo (6CP) The Inaccurate effect costs -2CP, which lets us get the power of 8 damage ranks for 6CP! Of course, these torpedoes won't be likely to hit anything much smaller or faster than a ship, but that's fine, that's what they're for. 20 minus 1 for Swim, minus 6 for our railgun, minus 6 for torpedoes means we have just 7CP left to spend, and our stats are still all 5s! This is where we're glad we didn't go crazy with lots of attacks and abilities or we'd be having to pare things back instead of still adding more. We want to be fairly accurate, so let's add +2 to our ACC. Maybe we're nimble, quick on our feet and quick witted as well, adding +2 to AGL and +2 to INT. Let's say we're not built for hand to hand combat and take -1 to STR. Now we've got 1CP to spend again. Well, it must take some lugnuts to go up against a full sized warship as a PT boat, so +2 to COU seems appropriate. STR 4 (4CP) ACC 7 (7CP) END 5 (5CP) FRP 5 (5CP) AGL 7 (7CP) INT 7 (7CP) LDR 5 (5CP) COU 7 (7CP) TEC 5 (5CP) Subtotal: 52CP We get a couple bonuses for being an OC! First, we can specialize our armor to be strong against one kind of damage in exchange for being weak against another, but that doesn't really seem necessary here. Not that we can't think of things we might be strong against, but we can't think of something else we want to be equally weak to, so let's skip that (or look it up elsewhere in the wiki if you don't want to skip it). And secondly, we can make "mode adjustments" to some of our stats! That is to say, in mode2, our STR, ACC, FRP and AGL can be different from what they are normally as a robot. We can adjust any single stat AND the stat total by plus or minus 2, but it has to equal out. In other words, we can get +2 STR and -1 FRP and -1 AGL, but we could not get +1 STR and no penalties, or +2 STR and +2 ACC even if the penalties are equal, or +3 anything. This is our opportunity to say how we're different as a boat from as a robot. Remember that we still can't go lower than 3 or higher than 8. Well, boats don't have much agility or strength, for one thing. But a torpedo boat does have big torpedoes on it. If we lower STR and AGL we get 3 and 6, which are legal, and if we use those penalties to add a +2 to FRP we get 7, which is also fine, so let's do that. MODE2 ADJUSTMENT: -1 STR, -1 AGL, +2 FRP. So there we go! Our final build looks like this: STR 4 (4CP) ACC 7 (7CP) END 5 (5CP) FRP 5 (5CP) AGL 6 (6CP) INT 7 (7CP) LDR 5 (5CP) COU 7 (7CP) TEC 5 (5CP) Subtotal: 52CP MODE1 - Robot SIZE1 - 6 (2CP) VEL1 - 4 (2CP) ARMOR1 - 5 (2.5CP) ABILITIES1 - None (0CP) MODE1 ATTACKS "Scoped Railgun" - 4 ranged ballistic, Accurate (6CP) Subtotal: 12.5CP MODE2 - Torpedo Boat SIZE2 - 7 (4CP) VEL2 - 4 (2CP) ARMOR2 - 5 (2.5CP) ABILITIES2 - Swim (1CP) MODE2 ATTACKS "Torpedo" - 8 ranged explosive, Inaccurate, 4 "Torpedoes" Ammo (6CP) MODE2 ADJUSTMENT: -1 STR, -1 AGL, +2 FRP. Subtotal: 15.5CP Total: 80CP _________________________________ The "Seeker Package" Let's say you don't want a boat (admittedly a rare altmode). That's fine, this method will work for cars and planes and motorcycles and spaceships and so on, which brings up the matter of the Seeker Package. If you're applying for a "standard Decepticon" this can make things a lot easier on you! Check out the seeker package wiki page... if you found that confusing, what it basically says is that as long as you're making a normal Decepticon jet you can have 84.5CP instead of 80CP to build it out of. The only downside is that if you ever change your mind and want to upgrade your seeker to be a triplechanger or a radio interception specialist or something like that, it will cost more AP then. This makes up for the standard Decepticon (a fighter jet) costing much more to build than the standard Autobot (a car), and more or less pays for your expensive mode2 weaponry. When building a seeker, you need to include the following things in your build process: VEL1: 4 (2cp) VEL2: 8 (4cp) Size1: 6 (2cp) Size2: 7 (4cp) and Flight in mode2 (2cp). Like the news file says, your mode2 needs to either be one of the Cybertronian tetrajets or some other kind of jet fighter or fighter/attack. No AWACS, no bombers. Not that you can't ever apply for them, of course, you just can't use the seeker package to get the 84.5CP max when you do. Using the seeker package, a sample character might look like this: STR 5 (5CP) ACC 7 (7CP) END 5 (5CP) FRP 6 (6CP) AGL 7 (7CP) INT 6 (6CP) LDR 5 (5CP) COU 6 (6CP) TEC 5 (5CP) Subtotal: 52CP MODE1 - Robot SIZE1 - 6 (2CP) VEL1 - 4 (2CP) ARMOR1 - 5 (2.5CP) ABILITIES1 - Flight (0CP because it's a Decepticon) MODE1 ATTACKS "Dual Arm Lasers" - 4 area-ranged energy (6CP) Subtotal: 12.5CP MODE2 - F-16 SIZE2 - 7 (4CP) VEL2 - 8 (4CP) ARMOR2 - 2 (1CP) ABILITIES2 - Flight (2CP) MODE2 ATTACKS "AIM-9 Sidewinder" - 4 ranged explosive, Accurate, 4 "Stores" Ammo (6CP); "Mk.20 Rockeye II" - 6 area-ranged explosive, Inaccurate, 0 "Stores" Ammo (3CP, this is half of what it should be because we are getting an "empty linked bin," so that it uses the Stores bin from the missiles instead) MODE2 ADJUSTMENT: -2 STR, +1 AGL, +1 FRP. Subtotal: 20CP Total: 84.5CP